Walter Whitman Jr. was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in…
Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been best-sellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold milli…
Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri is a British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian.
Ruth Reichl is the New York Times bestselling author of five memoirs, the novels Delicious! and The Paris Novel, and the cookbook My Kitchen Year. She was editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, and prev…
Timothy "Tim" William Burton is a prolific American film director/writer, best known for the dark imagery and quirky nature of his popular films. He is also the author and illustrator of the poetry co…
Gary Shteyngart is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fi…
Henry Charles Bukowski (born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski) was a German-born American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of hi…
Roger (Gilbert) Lancelyn Green was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group along with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolk…
Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 an…
Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, the Ile-Rien series, The Murderbot Diaries series, and …
Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for Fir…
Carlo M. Cipolla (August 15, 1922 – September 5, 2000) was an Italian economic historian. He was born in Pavia, where he got his academic degree in 1944. As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history…
Actor Stanley Tucci was born on November 11, 1960, in Peekskill, New York. He is the son of Joan (Tropiano), a writer, and Stanley Tucci, an art teacher. His family is Italian-American, with origins i…
Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent digital archive of culturally valua…
RUBY TANDOH is an author and journalist who has written for The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vittles and Elle. A finalist on The Great British Bake Off in 2013, she has written Eat Up!, a book about the …
W. David Marx is a long-time writer on culture based in Tokyo. He is the author of "Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style" (2015) and "Status and Culture" (2022). Marx's newsletter can be found at c…
Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the Nati…
Park Seolyeon (1989-) is a South Korean novelist. She made her literary debut in 2015 when her short story “Mikimauseu keulleob” (미키마우스 클럽 The Mickey Mouse Club) won the Silcheon Munhak New Writer’s A…
Adam Roberts is the creator of the food blog The Amateur Gourmet (launched in 2004). Since then, he's written several books -- including The Amateur Gourmet and Secrets of the Best Chefs -- as well fo…